Wherever we go and whatever we do, we keep being asked about the BEST email marketing campaigns people can run to make tonnes of cash.

Well, we have the perfect campaign for you. It's called the Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign, and our clients are seeing some amazing results with it right now. 

Wanna know more and get your mitts on it? 

Let's go. 

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:12) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.
(2:41) What is the THE best email marketing campaign EVER?
(4:08) What is the Paparazzi Flash Sale email campaign?
(5:52) What do you need in order to launch your Flash Sale email campaign?
(7:55) Add a countdown timer and bonuses!
(9:28) How does our Flash Sale email campaign work?
(12:15) Always have a strong reason why.
(14:14) Why does the Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign work so well?
(15:44) Go grab our flash sale campaign - join The League!
(16:43) Subject line of the week.

What is THE best email marketing campaign EVER? 

This is a hard question to answer, especially as we have over 40 email marketing campaigns (and counting) inside our membership The League. But ONE campaign definitely that stands out (because our members can’t stop raving about it) is The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign.

We’re consistently seeing our clients use this campaign and getting incredible results. For example, Hillary-Marie ran two versions of this campaign at two separate times and made $16,000 on each one – with a 20-21% conversion rate.

Brad joined our membership in February, ran this campaign straight after, and made $3,915 in sales. Plus, he also got a bunch of new sign-ups for his membership, which stacks up additional recurring income too! And then Marc ran the campaign and made over $1,000 selling $10-$30 low-ticket products. This campaign is a BEAST!

What is the Paparazzi Flash Sale email campaign?

The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign is our take on the flash sale or fire sale (as it's sometimes referred to). It's a 4-day campaign that helps you sell a boatload of stuff at a discounted price and with an added bonus or two. 

But let's take a step back to understand how this helps you sell. Sticking a discount on something doesn't necessarily mean you're suddenly going to make lots of sales. That's why you need a well-thought-out email campaign structure behind it. You probably already know this from experience – a discount is no magic spell that makes people buy! Because you're never going to convert 100% of the people who see it. 

What you need is anticipation and moments in your campaign where you change direction. In other words, a campaign needs to have a flow to it. And the reason why our Paparazzi campaign works and is so successful is that it’s a really simple campaign to deploy. 

So let's break it down. 

What do you need in order to launch your flash sale email campaign? 

The first thing you need to have in place is a sales page that's converting. As you know, we're in the business of email marketing here – not sales pages. So we’re going to assume you’ve created a good sales page that’s already converting well.

Once you have that page, you're going to duplicate it. You simply create a copy of it, which will become your flash sale version. Then you're going to make changes to that version only. So don’t go and tweak your actual sales page with the intention of changing it back once the flash sale is over. Instead, create a separate page for your flash sale.  

Once you've done that, you need to change the price of your product to the discounted price. But don't just delete the old price and replace it with the one one. Because if you do that, psychologically, people won’t know you’ve applied a discount! What you want to do instead is to cross out the full price and put the new price next to it. That shows people that, without a doubt, this is a sale. And you’re proving this. We like to say that a lot – if you’re going to say something, prove it.

With the price sorted, make sure that all the buttons on your flash sale page point to a place where people can buy your offer at the discounted price. 

Add a countdown timer and bonuses!

And finally, another thing you can do is to add a countdown timer to the page. This is animated and ticking down and shows how long people have left to take advantage of the discounted price before the flash sale ends. A countdown timer is important because it helps you add some urgency to your sale. It’s no longer just about the discount (and people love a discount!) – it’s also about making it high on people's priority list to go and grab that discount right now. 

If you want to make your discount even more effective, you can also add bonuses. And the reason this works is that you’re hitting a whole bunch of psychological triggers. Most importantly, all these factors combined have a compound effect – and that's what makes this campaign so powerful.

How does our Flash Sale email campaign work?

We run the Paparazzi campaign by sending 6 emails over 4 days – it's a very short, fast-paced campaign. We send an email a day for the first few days, and then on the last day, we send 3 emails to let people know that the flash sale is closing tonight. On that last day, we're really driving home the urgency of the fact that the sale is closing.

As with all our campaigns, the key to being able to send emails over a period of 4 days is to find lots of different reasons to email. If you only send out one email at the start of your campaign and say everything you have to say (such as talk about all the features of the product, talk about the flash sale, share testimonials, etc.) you'll soon run out of things to email about. In other words, you peak too soon. And that means all you can do is to keep repeating the same things day after day, which is not very effective for anyone. 

That's why with all our email marketing campaigns, we follow a specific format called SVVC, which stands for Seed, Validate, Verify, and Close. If you’re a member of The League, you'll find full in-depth training about this format inside our membership, so go check it out.

Our Paparazzi campaign is no different – it follows the same structure. So here it goes: 

• The first email plans the seed and announces that something's happening. 
• The second one talks about the discount – it validates the interest that the original announcement piqued. 
• In the third email, you use social proof and share testimonials and case studies. In other words, you go and verify that everything you said is true. 
• And then on the last day, with the fourth email, you send an email to say that the sale is closing tonight. That's the close of the SVVC acronym. 

On the last day, keep things simple!

A key principle for us is that on the last day, we don't get clever with any of our emails. This isn’t the right time for people to be distracted by stories or lessons. This campaign is very direct – there’s no fluff, no stories, and nothing that distracts people from the main focus, which is to buy. And that’s especially important on the last day.

Always have a strong reason why

One of the things we recommend you do is to have a strong reason why. Why are you giving a discount? Why is there a flash sale? This could be any kind of why. Robert Cialdini in his book The Psychology of Persuasion talks about this technique and how powerful it is. You can pretty much say anything as long as you explain it by giving a reason. And that's because people will believe you more, or they're more likely to comply with what you say – simply because you've given them a reason for what you're doing.

And the reason can be as bland or as honest as you want. It can be that you have a massive tax bill to pay, so you’re running a flash sale and discounting your course. It could be an offer you make to your new subscribers. Or it could be because it’s Email Marketing Wednesday! Or your birthday. You don’t have to wait for Black Friday or Christmas. Your reason can be anything, as long as you have one.

Why does the Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign work so well? 

First of all, it works because of the structure of the campaign. It’s a 4-day campaign, but you’re sending more than 4 emails. And you have a very specific reason for sending each and every one of them. Your emails all drive people towards the call to action, which is to go and take advantage of the discount you've applied and the bonuses you've added to your product. And that’s what helps grease the wheels and get people buying.

Plus, you can run this email live but also automate it, which is what we do. We have it running for all our new subscribers. The flash sale runs automatically within a certain amount of time of someone joining our email list. We use a countdown timer called Countdown Hero (available for free to members of The League), and that allows us to set a unique deadline for each subscriber. The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign is definitely a powerful one to automate and run in this way. 

Why? Because it encourages your subscribers to buy from you as soon as they enter your world. And once they've bought something, they're more likely to buy more. We’ve seen this statistically proven again and again with our business and also with our clients.

So the combination of all these factors – the fact you can automate the campaign, that you have a clear structure, that you’re offering a really good discount or some sort of bonus (or both) can result in creating a big surge of sales. Buying is urgent, so your audience needs to move this to the top of their priority list right now. It's what pushes people to get over the hill and buy.

Go grab our Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign!

If you want to try this for yourself, just head over to The League, and you’ll find everything you need in there. The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign is one of the 40+ campaigns we have inside our membership, and you’ll be able to get full access and also get an overview of everything we’ve just described.

Plus, you get full campaign workshop training, where we walk you through every single email – why we use the words we use and how you can put your own spin on the campaign to make it apply to your product, your business, your audience, and your personality. All you have to do is to grab the template and make some tweaks. You'll see – this is probably the one campaign out of all the ones we have that requires the least amount of changes. It's super easy to apply to your business! And once you’ve run this campaign successfully, you can move on and start working through all the others.

If you're having FOMO right now, what are you waiting for? Join The League NOW and grab this campaign for yourself!

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line is the words “car thieves.” Rob wrote this in lowercase and with a full stop at the end. The story was about the fact there are two different types of people in the world – people like Rob’s girlfriend Rachel, who will leave her debit card on the dashboard of her car and other valuable stuff on show, and people like Rob’s dad, who’s one of the most security conscious people you’ll ever meet.

The email was about two different attitudes to security, but the subject line wasn’t factual, obvious, or boring – it was interesting and generated curiosity.

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

How Our Client Hillary-Marie Made $16k With ONE Email Marketing Campaign (And Then Did It Again!)

How Brad 10x’d His Ad Spend In One Month – A Case Study.

And How Brad Brown Made $90k By Automating Webinars.

FREE list to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The League Membership

Not sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.

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